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The stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 1800s serve up life as generations of central Europeans knew it capricious and often cruel Once they saw how the tales bewitched young readers the Grimms brothers and editors aplenty after them started fixing things Tales gradually got softer sweeter and primly moral Yet all the polishing never rubbed away the solid heart of the stories Grimms folktales were attempt to transfer oral versions of the stories that often included sections of coarseness and were full of sexual overtones to the stories that could be readable They were using fairy tale scheme so they would cover the true intention of arguing about much more serious issues Twentieth-century psychologists notably Sigmund Freud Carl Jung and Bruno Bettelheim have interpreted elements of the folktales as manifestations of universal fears and desires This is exactly what Jacob and Wilhelm tried to accomplish At a first glance the simplicity of the Little Red-cap including the most important elements of good and evil directly leads to the search for the message do not talk to strangers And this is what children of today and children from hundreds of years ago have been learning from this simple story But if this folktale is read symbolically the real background can be discovered What Grimms brothers are arguing are rhythms of life Little Red-cap is growing into a woman but she is trapped in belief that she was still just a little girl and when Little Red-cap had reached the wood she met the wolf but as she did not know what a bad sort of animal he was she did not feel frightened Although being an often symbol of the enemy in fairy tales an evil devouring animal - wolf represents different kind of threat to the Little Red-cap He has an innocent little girl in front of him and that little girl is wearing a red cap This emotionally

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